The beautiful thing about having a lot of family records in the familysearch.org tree is that it provides the opportunity for people with similar surnames from similar places to find them and wonder if/how they might be related.

That is how Aaron Hee made a crucial connection just as 2021 was drawing to a close, and the cascade of events that happened in a short period of time was truly remarkable. Here’s the story.

The Long Search

Aaron’s grandfather, Bung Hoon Hee, was an immigrant from the village of Pan Sha in Guangdong area of China. When Bung Hoon was a child he was left behind in Hawaii when his parents took all his younger siblings back to China to keep them safe from an epidemic of some kind that was killing the young children in Hawaii. One of these younger brothers who was taken back to Pan Sha eventually married a woman from the Zhuo clan, and moved with her to Guan Tang Third Village — the same village my grandfather, Chock Chin, came from. (It is likely we will eventually find that his wife is a relative of Chock Chin.)

Growing up without his parents, Bung Hoon had a difficult time maintaining a meaningful connection with his relatives in China.  They mailed letters to each other in the early years. But for some reason, in the later years, they seem to lose contact.  Aaron has a letter from Bung Hoon contacting his relatives in Chinese, a prized family heirloom at this point.

Among the losses a child suffers when disconnected from family in this way is the loss of the family stories and intimate knowledge about the way people met life’s challenges — things most children usually hear in the home.  As a result, he did not have much to tell about his family to his own children, and therefore, Aaron’s father was not able to pass along family information to his Aaron and his siblings.  As Bung Hoon’s grandson, Aaron only learned a few fragmentary facts about the family in China.

As Aaron said, “All these years my father never got to meet his living relatives in China. His parents never mentioned family in China.”

As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day  Saints, Aaron was intensely interested in family history and genealogy. He tried for years to find any information that would lead him to his village in China, and any remaining relatives there. The dream was to find the jiapu that contained the ancestral records of his father’s line, so he could finally connect his family tree into the long history of his ancestors.

A few years ago, he attended a meeting where Gerry Goo Nihipali of Laie, Oahu, presented information about how she found her Gu/Goo relatives in China. He asked for her help. She introduced him to a researcher who spoke Chinese and was willing to travel to do some field research for him.

She located his village, met with some relatives and took a few pictures of them and of the ancestral house. The pictures in the ancestral house included some of Aaron’s grandfather, Bung Hoon Hee, which confirmed that she had found the right place.  Aaron’s objective at that time was mostly to connect to living relatives. He said, “My dad was excited when he saw pictures of the ancestral house. Unfortunately he passed away back in 2019.” He never met any of those relatives in person, despite having toured China at one point. The tour itinerary took them close to that village but did not actually go there.

After the contact the researcher made, Aaron attempted to open an email communication with them, but the language barriers were too hard to overcome.  He never heard back from them. Aaron was very discouraged and afraid he might not ever be able to connect with the family, and get the jiapus that document the longer history of his family.

Breakthrough

Louise Skyles has been working throughout 2021 to find the families of the females who married into the Chock/Zhuo family.  This is a difficult task in Chinese genealogy, because the women who marry into a clan are not well-documented on the clan pedigrees. Their names are given as Miss Tong or Miss Hee, but often their birthdates and village names are not recorded, and only rarely does the jiapu list the name of her father.  (In Western marriage records, the bride’s and groom’s data is usually the same, and will include full name, birthdate and place, and parents’ names for both the bride and groom.  In Chinese marriage records, the groom is the only important person, and his details are beautifully documented. The bride is not so lucky.)

This means that while my grandfather’s paternal line now connects back more than 90 generations, my grandmother’s line stops with her. On the Guan Tang Zhuo jiapu, she is simply Miss Xu of Pan Sha, wife of Chock Chin. (Xu and Hee are different pronunciations of the same Chinese character 許 — Hee is the Cantonese pronunciation, and Xu is Mandarin. On my family records, I have seen my grandmother listed as Miss Hsu, and Miss Hee of Pan Sha.)

In March 2021, having added all the Zhuo families we could find, we turned our attention to the parents of all the mothers/wives.  I was determined to find my actual grandmother’s records, no matter what.

In the course of hunting for the women of my tree, Louise was able to find significant troves of Gu jiapus (some of which relate to Gerry’s Gu ancestors).  By adding my Gu ancestors to my tree, we eventually made contact with Mr. Luo, a curator of the Zhuhai Museum who was seeking descendants of the Gu clan for an exhibit he was creating. This began a very productive research collaboration between Louise and Mr. Luo.

Visiting Pan Sha

In mid-December 2021, Mr. Luo planned a return trip to Pan Sha village to look for more of the missing Xu/Hee jiapus containing my grandmother’s family. However, his plans were delayed unexpectedly, and he was not able to go until December 29. This delay proved to be a blessing in disguise for Aaron.

Just before Mr. Luo set out, Aaron contacted Ailene Hee Sproat for Pan Sha Xu clan information, based on the records Louise had added for her.  He emailed her every little fragment of family information he had about his grandfather. She sent that immediately to Louise, who passed it on to Mr. Luo.  He agreed to add it to the list of records he would look for in Pan Sha.

Among the pieces of information Aaron had was an old address in Xi Heng Village of Pan Sha. Just like Ya Kou and Guan Tang, there are six subdivisions of small villages under the general name of Pan Sha. My grandmother and Ailene’s grandfather belonged to Pan Sha Village of Pan Sha, but Aaron’s grandfather was from a different subdivision, Xi Heng.

When Mr. Luo entered Xi Heng Village, he saw an old man sitting in the park near the entrance gate.

He explained he was looking for an address, and showed it to him. The man said, “That is my house address.”  This turned out to be Aaron’s relative, sitting there that morning in the park, as if in a movie.

Mr. Luo then explained that his purpose to come to Xi Heng Village was to look for Aaron’s relatives and find family records. The old man then went to his house and called his brothers to come. He then took Mr. Luo to their ancestral home which is next his house.

He introduced himself. His name is Xu Shao Tao. He is the son of Aaron’s grandfather’s brother. He said on his father’s death bed, his father told all his children not to sell the ancestral home because it belongs to all the brothers — including the brother in Hawaii, who was Aaron’s grandfather. So for many many years, they have been waiting for Hawaiian cousins to come home.

But Aaron’s father died before he could meet any of his relatives. So for them to finally, after so many years of waiting and watching, have news from their relatives in Hawaii that day brought tears to the eyes of Aaron’s uncles.

They did remember a visit from a woman (the researcher who had gone there to find information years before) but they said that were very confused throughout that encounter. They could not understand her well enough to know who she was looking for, so they did not realize she was sent there by a descendant of Bung Hoon Hee. (Pan Sha has a unique dialect that is unintelligible to Mandarin speakers. Even Louise could not understand it when she visited Pan Sha in March 2019 with Zhuo Bing Quan on the trip to obtain the Zhuo records.)

The uncles told Mr. Luo they will need a little time to gather the family history information for Aaron and will send it to Mr Luo. They sent word urging Aaron to visit them while they are all still alive. When the borders reopen after the danger of the Covid pandemic is behind us, I am confident there will be a marvelous reunion in the ancestral house.

Genealogy Footnote

Louise has found an interesting connection for us: a common ancestor that connects Aaron, Ailene, and me.

Here is the familysearch.org profile of Xu Shi Li.